Steven Soderbergh is one of the few commercial American directors who makes films about money—stealing it (the Oceans trilogy, Out of Sight, The Informant!, Th...
In Education, the fifth and final film in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology, Kenyah Sandy’s young, bespectacled face commands the frame. His character, Kings...
Alex Wheatle, the fourth entry in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology, offers a modest take on the process of unlearning cultural attitudes and biases through ...
Red, White and Blue, the third and weakest film from Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology series to premiere at this year’s NYFF, suffers because of its program...
Mangrove, the second film from Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology series to premiere at the 58th NYFF, covers the incidents precipitating, and including, the ...
An appropriately buoyant opening-night choice for this year’s New York Film Festival, Lovers Rock chronicles an underground London blues party, a space where B...
With each successive film she directs, Kelly Reichardt refines and clarifies her unique aesthetic, one that’s rooted in gentle observation and cumulative grace...
Part journalism procedural and part depressing exposé, Alexander Nanau’s verité documentary Collective examines the institutional corruption at the heart of th...
It’s a critical cliché to describe a filmmaker’s late-period output as elegiac, nostalgic, or any other adjective that suggests an aging artist grappling with t...
In First Cow, Kelly Reichardt carves out space for friendship and generosity amidst an otherwise selfish landscape. Set in the 1820s Pacific Northwest, a famili...
Vikram Murthi is a freelance writer and critic from Chicago and currently based in Brooklyn. Aside from The Film Stage, he has written for The A.V. Club, Vulture, RogerEbert.com, The Nation, Reverse Shot, and more. He will write about anything for anyone willing to pay him.
